


On Surviving, and Living After

by Starcrossedsky



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Canon, i will make my own order of lorelei lore and canon cannot stop me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28809396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: Six months after Eldrant, Jade grieves for someone he didn't expect to grieve for, mourns the things he didn't know were there to mourn, and does not write in a dead man's margins, thank you very much.The end result? A book, apparently.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	On Surviving, and Living After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rarmaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/gifts), [Cygna_hime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygna_hime/gifts).



> So this is a whole lot of feelings and a lot of things to say and didn't wind up NEARLY where I thought it was going to go. I wrote it furiously in the last five hours. I think it's my first canon compliant Abyss fic. For a very "they didn't say it WASN'T like this" definition of canon compliant. it also went through four titles in as many hours.
> 
> anyway I'm here to push the "actually Asch is VERY smart, he's just very stupid about it" agenda, paired with the "we have significant circumstantial evidence that he was a Maestro in his own right" agenda, and in the process I accidentally the "How does a religion about prophecy maintain itself for two thousand years? they argue about it. constantly. as part of their religious qualifications" agenda, thereby making this the most "awkward goy atheist writes an intensely Jewish fic by accident" fic ever. nothing in this fic is intended to 1:1 real life practices of any religion or culture, don't come at my face please.
> 
> I blame, in some form of order, Cygna and Luca (local Jewish enablers), rar (Jade feelings enabler) and Bramble (general purpose being thoughtful about fantasy religions enabler).

It isn't that you don't grieve for Luke.

You grieve, and deeply. In the bright afternoons, in the quiet places and the loud ones, you sometimes find your breath snatched away, and the heart that you've spent your whole life ignoring - 

(the heart that you have devoted so much of your life to trying to disprove the existence of, a thesis unpublished but not unwritten, a thesis torn apart casually and repeatedly by new evidence every time you think you have it figured out)

That heart, sometimes most unexpectedly, aches.

No, no one can say that you do not grieve for Luke. It's a grief that you were preparing for, for months, a grief that you _could_ prepare for. A grief you can put aside, when others feel it more keenly, when Guy has to call for a particular one of His Majesty's rappigs and then suddenly goes silent, when Natalia closes her eyes at the diplomatic table and takes a deep breath to center herself.

And you even expected, on some level, to grieve for Ion, now that everything is done. You put such emotions to the side, for a time, while the world had no time for them. Now it does, and you allow yourself a moment, when Anise calls you to help sort through the things that Mohs and Dist left in the secret labs hidden in Daath's holiest of grounds in Mount Zaleho. Daath hasn't yet chosen a new Fon Master, because the task falls to the Maestros if there is no suitable candidate, and that rank of the Order has been emptied by too much to get a majority vote on _any_ candidate. You can't get the approval of four when only three remain - the eldest dead of the complexities of miasma combined with replica data extraction, Mohs and Van dead of the consequences of their respective attempts at secession, and Asch...

Well. That is where the problem sticks.

Because you didn't expect to feel anything like grief for Asch the Bloody.

To be fair, some of it is the boy's own fault. He was stubborn and foolish to the end, trapped in a prison of his own emotions that he couldn't see, tied up in a knot by his own prejudices and traumas. Asch died, in part, because he wouldn't allow himself to heal.

You tell yourself that you do not relate to such things, but you know it wouldn't pass peer review. Especially when Van cultivated such things among his followers, tended and fertilized their losses and obsessions with the careful eye of a farmer seeking to maximize his harvest. You cannot delude yourself, with the benefit of age and experience and a friend who cared enough to try to drag you out of it (a luxury Asch didn't have, and perhaps wouldn't have permitted himself).

So you cannot pretend that you do not understand the ways in which you too were controlled by your emotions at seventeen. That alone isn't enough to cause you grief.

It's an offhand comment by Maestro Tritheim, during one of the conferences in Daath to figure out what to do with the Order and the world in general.

"It's a pity Asch didn't survive the assault on Eldrant," the man says, quiet in a way that might be grief of his own or might simply be to avoid stirring up the grief of the Kimlascans. (Natalia is still dressed in almost full black, though one might expect her to have moved on to half-mourning wear by now, six months and change later.) "He had such a sharp mind for reform - we would have benefited greatly from his presence in the years to come."

"Oh?" You don't make an attempt to disguise your curiosity. "This is the first I've heard someone say such things of him. I'm more familiar with his other reputation."

Tritheim considers you for a moment before responding. "I suppose that isn't surprising," he says. "Even in Daath, most people assume that he only rose to his rank on Van's coattails, especially since that's certainly true of the rest of the man's faction."

"And outside Daath, he was better known for his martial abilities than anything," you say, which is the most polite way you have of saying, _his moniker was the Bloody and not a single person doubted that he'd earned it._ You'll only speak ill of the dead who deserve it.

Tritheim nods. "It's hard not to gain that kind of reputation, in Special Operations, and especially as its commander," he agrees. "But - well, perhaps it would be for the better if you read his words for yourself, Colonel Curtiss. I'm certain I would be able to obtain a copy of his Maestro confirmation arguments for you."

You raise your eyebrows, and adjust your glasses to cover your mild confusion. "I confess, I'm not familiar with the process of reaching the rank of Maestro in the Order," you say. 

"Of course," Tritheim. "It's a rather involved process - not unlike university programs, really. The Order of Lorelei focuses on building one's physical body, but the civilian branch develops the mind and understanding of scripture. Most choose one branch or the other, though certain positions require knowledge of both - the position of Commandant, for example, may only be held by a Maestro."

"Hence the gaping void that exists presently," you say. "I imagine Asch was the expected successor to that position."

Tritheim nods. "Exactly so, but his attaining the rank of Maestro was purely through his own diligence. He is not the youngest Maestro on record, but I believe that's only for his late start; both of those who attained the rank younger had lived in Daath since birth, and were Scored to become Fon Master besides. Asch completed the program most quickly, and that alongside his other duties."

That... is certainly not something you expected to hear. And it is a familiar enough story, in some ways.

(The page your heart flips to can't be labeled grief, but you don't remember writing it in, and so you cannot recall the name.)

"Well," you say, easing into a smile. "Then I would certainly be grateful for the opportunity." And when you're done, you'll give the copy to Natalia, who surely has more right to the knowledge than you do. Only when you're done, because you can only imagine how she'll weep over the pages, if Asch's mind for _reform_ is anything like the boy of childhood memories you've heard her confess to.

"I suppose it's not every day you get to engage with the work of someone as precocious as you were at that age," Tritheim says. "Even if the subject is not your typical fare."

"It isn't," you agree, and the way your chest tightens is certainly, _certainly_ not grief.

\----

Tritheim sends you two documents. The first is an outline of the requirements of the program in itself, which is dry but important for context. It really is like a high level university program, complete with oral arguments before a board of advisors (though in this case, of course, those advisors were the current Maestros and the Fon Master). The difference, primarily, is that there is _competition_.

Universities can grant any number of doctorates they choose. There are only seven Maestros in the Order of Lorelei, and the position opens only irregularly as one's predecessors die. (Retirement is virtually unheard of in the position, you learn. The last time a Maestro retired was over four centuries ago.)

But of course, Van's predecessor as Commandant had already been growing old, and took a nasty fall around three years ago, shattering his hip in a way that he never recovered from. You are bitter enough to wonder if it was more assassination than accident, but you had never thought to pair it with Asch's ascent to the position he held by the time you met.

The position traditionally remains open for a year, to allow candidates time to develop their theses and arguments. Most of those candidates, however, would have been preparing long before, only awaiting the opportunity. The next youngest of the four candidates at the time was forty-two years of age.

Asch's written arguments are dated for late in Undine-Redecan, nearing three years ago. He would have been fifteen.

(You published your first thesis on fomicry at thirteen, but you had also been working in the subject a full three years longer than the _earliest_ date Asch could have arrived in Daath at the time.)

You set the context aside, and flick open the cover. It's only been two days since Tritheim mentioned it to you, so you expected a printing press copy.

Instead, the handwriting on the page leaps out to you as heart-stoppingly familiar, if far clearer and better-formed than you're familiar with, and you have to stop before you read a word and put it _down_ , to wrestle with the realization that among their numerous similarities, it should come as no surprise that Asch and Luke had similar handwriting.

After all, Asch had already learned to write by the time Luke was born, and the replica process would have taken that along with every other neurological imprint inside his skull. (You prefer to believe that that is the cause, rather than their being perfect isofons, because it is reasonable and explicable and you have no desire to add more inexplicable things to their lives.)

You should have expected it.

You did not expect it. 

You lock the manuscript in the drawer of your bedside table - you have proper rooms in the cathedral itself at the moment, but Anise is so very nosy and would surely bear the document to Natalia immediately, and there go your plans for reading it without the distortions of tearstains - and go to sit at the nearest bar for an hour instead, nursing one drink and then a second. Only thus fortified do you feel able to return to your room and sit awake long into the night, with a manuscript in a dead child's hand.

\----

The point of a Maestro candidate's confirmation arguments is to prove their knowledge of the Score and its scriptures, in particular Yulia's Score, as well as their _understanding_ of such things.

You retain information exceptionally well, but you've never been the sort to pay much mind to the Score at all (it's a crapshoot if you even get your birth Score read in any given year), much less the parts of Yulia's Score that are considered complete.

Thus, to your embarrassment, you realize before you progress much further than two paragraphs into Asch's paper - if it can be even _called_ such, as it's somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred pages and would be called a book if it were printed instead of handwritten - that you are going to need to obtain a copy of said Score for reference as you read. By the time you're through the second page, you realize that you are going to need a copy of the Score with _classical commentary_ , because Asch has references to no less than three apparently-well-known Fon Master's commentaries on the passages he cites by nothing more than name, year, and rarely a line number. 

You're not even sure that all of the Scores referenced are Yulia's, and you wouldn't begin to know where to look for the ones that aren't. Scorers of such strong ability _also_ haven't existed for some centuries, unless one counts Ion's final Score in Mount Zaleho.

You'll swallow your pride and ask Tritheim for recommendations in the morning. For now, you take stock of what you can understand of the core of Asch's argument, which is this:

1\. There are multiple passages throughout history which directly reference survivors of other Scored events, even when those Scores would appear to indicate a Score of death for all involved.  
2\. Therefore, it is the will of Lorelei ( _and you can practically feel the rage and irony both coming off the page, every time Asch's hand wrote those words_ ) whether someone survives such destruction or not.  
3\. And therefore, the Order's standing policies of eliminating survivors of such incidents, as it did following the Hod War, is incorrect to Lorelei's will, and forcing a human misunderstanding of the Score upon the world.

Asch also promises to elaborate on three similar incidents in which the Order's interpretation was in error, two of which aren't familiar to you from your study of history and may very well occupy that strange zone of events that were Closed Score at the time but are so distantly in the past that they are no longer kept secret, at least in the upper reaches of the Order. You weren't that close a study of history either, however.

(It is only as you've grown older that you've grown any appreciation for history that isn't your own, for a time that is not the present in front of your face or the past that was warmth against the cold of your upbringing. The surprise comes not in the fact that Asch saw further than that, but that he saw the past as well as the future.)

The subject matter, in itself, does not surprise you. You can imagine Asch, all too clearly within his mind, applying this argument not only to the survivors of Hod (did he know, then, of Van's origins? Of Guy's?), but to the future survivors of Akzeriuth's fall, the Closed Score that wasn't supposed to have been opened to him yet. Of course Asch would have been concerned with the lives of such people.

And it is only mildly interesting to note that his arguments, at least thus far, rest on interpretation and pure logic, without any calls into morality. By fifteen, you think, he had already buried that part of himself beneath such a layer of pragmaticism that it would be impossible to unearth. It is not something you can claim to relate to, possessing few such moral objections yourself, and so you find some ironic amusement in the fact that it comes closer to your style of argument than you would have ever expected.

What is surprising is that the boy who hated the Score with so much burning passion is absent from these pages. The passion is still there, certainly - and you can only imagine Asch, with his almost explosive vehemence, arguing this case before a panel that likely thought him ridiculous for even trying - but the hatred is not even resentment, not even the _scent_ of resentment. The writing is as devout and pious and _dedicated_ as anything you've heard out of the mouth of a legitimate Order member brought up under the long reaching shadows of Daath's cathedral.

How much, you think, as you close the manuscript for the night, did that take from him? How much dedication must it have taken to write this, all three hundred pages of it, while wearing that mask? How many drafts did he go through, working late into the night under a fonstone lamp the same way you are reading his words, to polish away the blemishes of his own distaste?

How badly must Asch have wanted this? Was it with the same desperation that fought itself from your own grip on the Tower of Rem, that struggled and finally jerked free of your hands to save the life of the replica he disdained so very much? Was it because he wanted to prove he was capable of such without standing in Van's shadow, to have one achievement the man couldn't taint, or was it because he already distrusted Van then, and to gain access to the Closed Score himself was the only way to be certain of the truth, and this was the only way to do so?

It is then that the realization strikes you.

Or perhaps more accurately, the volley of realizations: That it was not by coincidental study that Asch was able to keep up with you and even point you in the right direction when it came to matters of the Passage Rings and Planet Storm. That the Asch in your memories of him was dissolving at the seams, a fact that you knew but only now _understand_. That no one will ever have the full picture of him, the way you have the full picture of Luke's pains and anxieties and life and dying, all written in a scribbled hand in a diary given into Tear's hands before she could walk away. That you will never know Luke's full potential, the potential of matching the boy who wrote the document in your hands, and that Asch's disdain for him was perhaps unfair but not unfounded.

That Van Grants took something precious from the world, and broke it, and you, of all people, are mourning it. 

You do not weep. You do not rage. Neither of those things are productive. 

You put the manuscript on your bedside, and turn out the light.

\----

In the morning, you realize that of all of the people who knew Asch, Tear is the only one with anything near approaching the background required to understand his thesis. (It is a thesis, for all intents and purposes, and you will give it the gravity of referring to it as such.)

In the morning, you ask Tritheim for the books you need to actually understand what he's written, and permission to take the whole batch back to Malkuth with you. He grants it with his eyebrows raised.

"I admit," he confesses, "given your disdain for the Score and the Order, I didn't expect you to take reading it so seriously."

You simply smile, and pack the volumes he directs you to - a slim-as-expected copy of Yulia's Score, three thick commentaries, and another medium sized compilation of Scores of note - into a case with the precious manuscript itself.

"I didn't expect to ever take it so seriously myself," you say.

(You think of all the times you thought to yourself that you didn't need to take _Asch_ seriously, and find them under a subheader in your heart you didn't realize existed, labeled shame.)

And on the trip back to Malkuth, you begin the long process of cross-referencing, writing your own notes in a separate journal you've bought for the purpose.

Asch's family may not have done him the dignity of a separate memorial, with the name he used until his dying breath, disavowing any other - but you can at least do him the respect of not writing in his margins.

\----

"I never thought I'd see _you_ reading Score commentaries so devoutly," Peony says, leaning across your desk as he reads over your shoulder. 

It's a fair comment, considering that there are two commentaries in front of you, Yulia's Score propped up and open against the wall your desk faces, and Asch's manuscript spread between them. The other books are at your elbow as you scribble away in the journal wedged under your hand.

It's been six weeks, and you're about halfway through the arguments. Your current emotion, at present, is that as dear as he is to you, Peony should be glad that he never had to meet Asch on the far side of a treaty table.

"It's something of a pet project," you say lightly. "Don't worry, I have no intention of abandoning you for Daath."

"Good," Peony says, resting his elbow on _Significant Scores of the New Era_. "With the state the Order is in, I'm not sure that I'd ever be able to find you to convince you to come back."

You hum agreement. "Anise is doing her best," you say, "but the girl really does take on too much."

You haven't been able to bring yourself to break it to her that she'll never be able to live her dream of becoming the first female Fon Master, because (as you discovered in a commentary by Fon Master Dorio, and now you understand a great deal more of how the ranking system works) the strictest requirement of the position is not gender but ability with the Seventh Fonon. She'd do better backing Tear for the position, as the strongest remaining Seventh Fonist of their generation.

"Hopefully they'll have some new leadership in place by the New Year, at least," Peony says. "You going to tell me about your project?"

"Perhaps when it's finished, I'll let you read it first," you say. "If you stop bothering me and take care of your _own_ pile of work."

(Peony didn't know Asch, never once did they meet, but still thought of him enough to include him in the creation of ridiculous costumes. But perhaps he should.)

(Perhaps _everyone_ should. Luke's name has become known nearly everywhere, not as the savior of the world that he was but at least that he fought to stop the war and gave his life for peace, and you may never understand either of them completely but you understand Luke _enough_ , to know that he would never want to be the one spoken of while Asch lies forgotten.)

"Okay, okay, message received," Peony says. "Sure you can't even give me a hint?"

You consider, and smile.

"One might say it's about surviving," you say, "and those who get to talk about it."

\----

It doesn't really occur to you, though, that anyone outside your inner circle might want or _deserve_ to read the words until - 

You're in Kimlasca, for the first anniversary. It's the first time all of you, the survivors, have been in one place since you parted after Eldrant. Even Mieu is there, having lapsed into a mostly content life as the Fabre house pet, clinging now to Natalia's shoulder as he used to cling to Luke's.

Six people and a cheagle, sitting in a manor garden. The two empty chairs, a Kimlascan tradition, sit one between Anise and Tear, and one between Natalia and Guy. The anniversary of Ion's death is past by months, but not including him doesn't seem to have crossed anyone's minds, and you certainly have no objections.

You elect to stand at the side of the table, leaving the chair on Tear's other side empty as well. It isn't a conscious decision until it is, when Natalia looks at the chair and suddenly presses her hands to her mouth.

"I - I'll get another," she says. Officially, today is the last day of her mourning, a year since the loss, and her gown is still somber colors trimmed in black. "You're right, we should - "

"You needn't bother," you say, adjusting your glasses. You're not prone to such obvious displays of emotion and sentiment, and you don't think you would be even if you were as Kimlascan as the soil beneath your feet. "If I wasn't standing, I'm sure they'd think there was something wrong."

Natalia flinches, just a hair, but it's the kind of flinch that comes with a sad smile. "You're right," she says. "Still, I shouldn't have forgotten, even if everyone else has."

There's silence among the group, then. None of them want to come face to face with Asch's specter, so much harder to define than Luke's. 

Noelle says, "We should have invited Ginji. He knew Asch better than any of us did."

Anise says, "The Dark Wings, too. They were his friends, even if he was too stubborn to admit it."

Mieu makes a sad squeak of agreement, climbing up to sit in Tear's lap. She pets him absently, as she glances around.

"Something on your mind?" you prompt her. 

She startles, and then says, "I was thinking, about Luke's diary..."

Whatever she was going to say is trailed off, and Natalia slips into the space. "There's a group asking if we would be willing to publish it," the princess says. "I told them there was no way to decide that right now, but I don't know if they'll accept that answer for long."

"Wait - seriously?" Anise says, aghast. "I'm surprised you're even considering it! Even if there would be a lot of money in it..."

Ah, Anise, never change.

"I see the conflict," Guy says. "It's a lot of his private thoughts, but it might be the best way to ensure that people remember him as a person."

"And it humanizes the replicas," Natalia says. "We've been able to help a lot of them, but I'll be honest, some of them will never be able to act normally."

Anise makes a small noise. "Like Florian," she says quietly. "He still acts like a little kid."

He also gets overwhelmed easily, from what you've heard, which is why Anise didn't bring him to Baticul with her for this. 

"Unfortunately," you say, "the reality of it is that the best-functioning replicas are the ones who went to Rem. The ones who remain have few advocates. In addition to gaining them sympathy, publishing Luke's journal would provide a fund for taking care of them, since I'm certain it would be a bestseller."

Natalia nods. "That's the decision in front of us," she says. "Aunt Susanne and I have been talking about it a lot, but we haven't come to any conclusions."

Another brief stint of silence, until Tear says, her hand sliding off Mieu's ears to tighten in her lap, "I think you should do it. If Luke didn't want anyone to know, he wouldn't have given it to us."

"You might be right," Noelle says. "It feels unfair to Asch, though. Luke already gets all the memorials as it is."

"Yeah, well, there's not much we can do about that," Guy says. "He didn't exactly write things down much."

You can't help it. You chuckle, and every head swivels in your direction, the same unspoken question on all of them. "Oh," you say, "it's just that I have a few things from Daath that beg to differ."

Confusion, and then Tear's eyes shoot open suddenly enough that you think she would have stood in surprise if Mieu wasn't in her lap. "Of course! His Maestro's arguments - but how do _you_ have them, Jade?"

"I have my sources," you say with a shrug. "It's hardly as personal as a diary, but it's something."

"Most people aren't going to be able to understand those, though," Anise says. "I went to the verbal arguments they held last month, and I didn't understand half of what they were talking about! And I've lived my whole life in Daath!"

Natalia remains silent, her expression soft, but her eyes are threatening tears quickly, so you look away. Not that looking at most of the rest of them is much easier.

"What was his argument on?" Tear asks. "I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about it. No one's mentioned it at the argument sessions so far, though I suppose that's not surprising since it's so new."

You have a better answer this time, than you did when Peony asked you. Such is the evolution of an idea from a draft to publishing.

"It's on the right of people to live, after surviving a Score that should have killed them," you say.

Natalia makes a sound that would be a very unprincesslike snort of laughter, made even less dignified by sinuses full of tears and the resulting snot. "Of course he would," she says. "Of course he did. I..."

"I would be perfectly happy to let you read it," you say, "but perhaps you should wait for my commentary to be finished. Anise isn't wrong about how difficult it is for a layperson to understand. Luke's handwriting is easier to decipher."

"Oh," she says. "I... Thank you, Colonel. I can wait."

"Of course," you say, "if you'd like to publish it alongside Luke's journal, it will take more time to bring it to a polish suitable for such things."

"I... Only if you think it would be appropriate," Natalia says. "You're the one who's read it. And that's assuming there aren't any problems with the Order...?"

"There shouldn't be," Tear says. "Technically, such writings are available for anyone who would like to read them, it's just that few people do. I'll have to look for a copy myself - you're supposed to submit seven, so there should be at least one still in Daath."

You shift your weight. "If he wrote seven copies and they're all legible, I am _doubly_ impressed," you say. "It is not a small volume."

"It wouldn't be," Tear says. "I'll see if I can come by Grand Chokmah in the next few weeks, but you can write me if there's anything that has you stuck."

"I appreciate the offer," you say. "Though nothing's stumped me so far, I don't exactly have the cultural background to be completely familiar with the material."

"That's our Colonel," Anise mutters. "Do you ever get tired of being an unmatched genius, Jade?"

You bite your tongue on the thought that in a few years, in a lifetime that didn't deal him such a rotten hand, you might not have been so unmatched. (That lifetime wouldn't have given you Luke, and you cannot decide if that is better or worse in the long run.)

Instead you say, "It will still be a work of primarily academic interest... But it will be something, at least."

"I'll look forward to it," Natalia says. She glances at the sky. "I suppose we should be getting ready for the service, shouldn't we? It's getting to be about that time."

"I suppose so," you agree with a sigh. Murmurs of agreement follow, as you all go your separate ways, to sit in separate places at one memorial service for two people.

Stuffy and full of posturing as it is, you're more certain than ever that both of them would have hated it.

\----

It takes you two months more to finish your annotations properly. This is the version that you give initially to Tear for her approval. She reads it over and returns it to you full of further annotations, things about life and culture in the Order that you just missed.

You work those in for the next draft, the one that comes together from your notes and your memories, another three months in. The first draft was for yourself. The second is for the stranger, the one who has no context of Asch, the life he lived, the Score he fought against that in the end failed to kill him. The second draft is a match for Luke's journal, for although you cannot share Asch's true thoughts, it spills his secrets without mercy.

You send that one to Tear, and she returns it in person two weeks later.

"This will be the most controversial academic work on the Score in decades. You do realize that, right?" she asks.

"I daresay that's what he would have wanted," you reply, taking the manuscript back with care. It's actually two volumes now, your commentary interspersed with Asch's original words, scribbled until your hand cramped in the late hours of the night. You have no idea how he managed seven copies.

Tear laughs, bitterly. "I suppose it is," she says. And then, more quietly, "He was arguing for his own life, too."

" _The youth will destroy himself and the city_ ," you quote. "Though it was more Luke who was destroyed that day, in the end." Shattered beyond recognition, and perhaps beyond repair. Natalia has sent the draft of the version of his journal to be published around to all of you now, and you discovered the kind of grief called anger all anew in your conclusion, for the way he despaired.

"You didn't see him there," Tear says. "The moment he realized what Van was doing, when he realized _I_ was being led to safety and no one else... It hollowed something out of Asch that he never got back."

And then, rather than exploding outwards to shove blame on someone else, it cascaded inwards around whatever piece was missing. You can only have a hypothesis about the name of that piece, but you would guess that Asch called it hope if he called it anything at all.

"I'll find a way to work it in," you say. 

It will be biting, but somewhere down the line, your commentary became biting whether you like it or not. Asch was never gentle and grief is less so, even on the page.

\----

The only other person you allow to read it before publishing is Peony.

"This is raw, Jade," is what he says when he's done. "You didn't pull any punches."

"Neither did you, when you thought I needed them," you say, which is probably more emotional honesty than you would allow yourself around anyone else, or at least anyone else living.

Peony laughs, briefly, and then says, "Really, though... It's good. And it's good because Asch cared about what he was talking about, and so did you."

"I just gave the common person the context to understand his argument," you say. "It was mostly research."

"Whatever you say," Peony says, seeing right through you. "Are we publishing it, or are you sending it to the Kimlascans?"

(The most frightening thing about this, the thing that almost makes you want to take the manuscript back and scrub all traces of your personality from it, is the fear that everyone reading it will do the same. You hope Asch appreciates you ruining your reputation for him.)

"We're publishing it," you say firmly. "It's only fair; the Kimlascans got Luke's, and he's sure to be the more popular one."

It's easier to relate to Luke's inadequacy and guilt than it is to Asch's passion and your own sharp edges. 

"I guess it'll be easier to get it published here anyway," Peony says thoughtfully. "Since our relationship with Daath isn't as close, and... Well, some of the stuff you say in here is pretty inflammatory."

You chuckle. "It's not particularly flattering to the Kimlascan crown at points, either."

Peony nods. And after some consideration, he says, "Are you really okay with this, Jade?"

You hesitate. "I did him a great disservice in life," you say finally. "It seems like I owe him at least this much, to make up for my mistakes."

You spoke at some length, in the end, of the fonon separation that Asch went through at the end of his life, and how that influenced his decisions. But you did not speak of the secret that only you and Dist know, the reason you held him back on the Tower of Rem no matter how he struggled.

You still would not change that decision, knowing what you know now. But you think it is no longer as simple as it was, when Luke was the only one of them that you saw value in, the only one that you took the risk of relating to.

You are not sure if you would make the same decision to stay silent, about your reasons for holding Asch back, to allow Luke to die as himself. You can admit, if only to yourself, that to allow Asch to believe that his dying meant his _death_ , with the way it influenced his actions in the end...

Perhaps one of them could have survived, and that would have been better than none. You will never know.

Peony looks at you like he knows what you're thinking, because even if he doesn't, he knows _you_ , and says, "Sometimes that's all you can do."

\----

> **_On Surviving, and Living After_ **
> 
> Foreword by Jade Curtiss
> 
> This manuscript is the only known work of the young man known as Asch the Bloody, otherwise known by his birth name, Luke fon Fabre. Asch rejected the latter name until the very end of his life; out of respect for both him and his replica, I have opted exclusively to use the former.
> 
> Asch was born as a member of the royal family in Kimlasca, and was by all accounts the ideal heir until his kidnapping in ND 2010. Shortly thereafter he came to reside in Daath, where he began to climb the ranks of the Order of Lorelei under the tutelage and keeping of his kidnapper, Van Grants. His birth identity, the true nature of his connection to Grants, and virtually all of his true feelings were kept secret.
> 
> I cannot say that I knew Asch well. I know only the side of himself he showed to me: One half a military commander more professional than his years should merit, and the other half a bitter, lonely child who struck out at anything that caused him pain. He was intelligent, though not in such an obvious way as myself as a child, painfully driven, and charged through life as though he could feel his own death breathing down his neck. I would later find out - twice over - that he very much could, and ultimately it did catch up with him all too quickly.
> 
> I became aware of this manuscript - his formal arguments, presented in Daath, to earn the rank of Maestro - six months after his death by what is nearly random chance, a stray comment I overheard in Daath while attending a diplomatic conference. The first night I spent with it caused me to experience a different sort of humility than my journey alongside Luke. Where Luke taught me humility in my emotions and my ability to face my own mistakes, Asch forced me to confront a more academic sort of humility: the fact that I did not know everything. 
> 
> Indeed, looking back, there were many times when he knew more than I did, in ways that I did not think worth confronting at the time. I dismissed him as a person controlled by his emotions, which he certainly was, and by his trauma, which was debilitating to begin with and I realize now only grew worse during that year. Such people, I thought in my arrogance, could not also be of deep intellectual merit.
> 
> And while there were certainly times that Asch performed stupidity as though it were his calling - on the fly adjustment of plans, in particular, was far from his strong suit - in the course of reading his work, I realized that I could no longer think such a thing of him. Asch's intellectual merit was in large part because of his emotions, rather than in spite of them. Those emotions drove him to attack problems of life, ethics, and morality with a tenacity I cannot help but admire, having been long intellectually lazy in such pursuits myself.
> 
> Asch was far from perfect. He was very much prejudicial, difficult to work with, uncommunicative and secretive to a fault. It is the last to which I would call the reader's attention, for it is that trait which informs my reading of his words, years after they were written and six months after his death, more than any other.
> 
> Asch the Bloody was a Maestro of the Order of Lorelei, tasked with upholding and guiding the world towards prosperity based upon Yulia's Score. This manuscript is not foremost among his works in that regard, as he is far better known for his position as Commander of Special Operations in the Order of Lorelei. Asch earned his violent moniker doing the Order's most unpleasant tasks - and yet his Maestro arguments are, effectively, an argument against his own position. They take to task the Order of Lorelei's elimination of any Hod survivors it could find, a task which was frequently carried out by Asch's own hands.
> 
> This contradiction is explained entirely too simply to one who knows Asch's secrets: First, that he was born Luke fon Fabre, and was replaced by a replica at nine years of age. Second, that this replacement occurred because of a passage in the Closed Score that predicted that the destruction of Akzeriuth rested on his hands, and would destroy him as well. Third, that at the time of this writing and likely for the entire duration of his time in Daath, Asch was entirely aware of that Score.
> 
> As I said, he was all too aware of death breathing down his neck.
> 
> As a result, Asch hated both Score and Order with more intensity than anyone else I have ever known, his mentor-cum-kidnapper-cum-mentor included. I believe, also, that he feared it more than anyone will ever know.
> 
> And so his argument in favor of allowing people to live takes on an entirely new light, when one steps back and realizes that it was not merely the survivors of the Hod War he spoke of with such passion. It was not the past he spoke of; it was the future, his own future and that of a mining town in the south of Malkuth, full of strangers he had never met.
> 
> "Must destruction mean death?" he asks of his audience, the very highest echelon of the Order. "Can it not mean simply to lose everything, and start over as something new?" Words that take on a very different meaning, when paired with the passage of Yulia's Score they reference:
> 
> _ND2018. The young scion of Lorelei's power shall bring his people to the miner's city. There, the youth will turn power to calamity and be as a weapon of Kimlasca, destroying himself and the city._
> 
> In the end, although Asch survived the destruction of Akzeriuth, he still died within the year of that Score. Suffering from terminal fonon separation as a complication of the destruction of the miasma at the Tower of Rem, Asch gave his life in the battle at Eldrant. His body has not been recovered as of this writing, and may well never be.
> 
> These words - his argument in favor of life - will someday be all that remains. The truth of his thoughts while writing them will forever remain secret from us. All I, or anyone else, can do is make educated guesses and fill in the blanks.
> 
> But in the end, there is something triumphant in them. Not because these words did, indeed, earn Asch the title of Maestro, but because he proved them true with his own hands.
> 
> Commentaries on the Score often feature two phases: The first is speculation, before the event, as to its nature. The second is hindsight, describing what actually happened, and how that might be applied to the future. I am no scholar of the Score, but I find myself in complete and unfettered agreement with these commentaries on one point:
> 
> What actually happened is the most compelling argument of all.


End file.
